Yet another example where customers, fans and business owners work together on a mission – this time, of somewhat different kind. Papa John, the Pizza restaurant chain, celebrated 25th year anniversary – and the mission was to find back the car, owner (John Schnatter) had sold in 1983, to start the business. Lost love, you see! This car, the Camaro, was worth falling in love for, lets say, a collector’s dream. Why not? For the car that was sold for $2800 in 1983, was bought back at $250,000 – you calculate the appreciation.

What is interesting is the role, media and social sourcing played in the hunt, giving back Schnatter, not just the car, but, also a massive positive brand publicity. To thank, PapaJohn is offering “free pizza” to all Camaro owners at the restaurant.

By the way, I have an old Mustang Convertible – just in case someone wanted to get reunited with?

This is for those ObjectiveMarketer users, who are wondering why Twitter is not accepting your username and password for messages you are trying to post via ObjectiveMarketer (or via Twitter web UI / any other client as well, as in my case). This is because – Today, according to @biz, Twitter is having with some technical issues, due to failure in database replication – and they are soon going to fix it. The complete information can be found on the Twitter Blog at here.

We are monitoring and waiting to hear updates from Twitter Headquarters. We hope to be able to communicate on Twitter – real fast. No Downtime, is ever good!

The entire incident has raised several questions on the ethics of journalism. There is a difference between sharing news and selling sensational story. Any “S” word sells today! I am an avid fan and follower of Techcrunch. I read it almost, every day, sometimes, several times during the day. The way this story was presented, will not stop me from going to Techcrunch. But, it did make me cringe. I would have liked to see Techcrunch (Michael Arrington) stand up as an example, and not “react to the reaction” saying “If we did not publish, somebody else would have”. This is not convincing at all.

The story was covered in CNN.com where 4 top-notch bloggers where asked to comment on the entire episode. Please, follow the link below for the streaming of this discussion, straight from CNN.com

With an increase in Brand presence on Twitter, it is interesting to note how the brands are actually represented. Putting a human face to a brand, makes it more accessible and real. That is one side of the story. Just a quick look at some of the brands on Twitter will give a good compilation of good and bad Brand representation. However, there is another side of the story that is the interest of my today’s writeup. In cases, where a Personal Brand is as powerful as the Corporate Brand – what are the terms and conditions of the two co-existing. I will take an example of CTO of CISCO, Padmasree to make a point, or rather channelize brainstorming for the topic.

CTO of Cisco, Padmasree has 614,795 followers on Twitter. She follows 68. Her followership increased by leaps and bounds, after she was announced a candidate for CTO USA position. By, all means, these are impressive numbers.

While, her Bio reads “CTO of Twitter”, this still is her personal Space. With the amount of exposure, the large number of following puts Padmasree into, any Cisco specific pitch she makes, gets very high traction.

Isn’t it only natural that companies will leverage the personal brand for promoting corporate pitches? But, who owns the decision? Are there any guidelines? As long as everything goes well, it is golden – what happens if they don’t. And what happens, when a person who has a large number of following, on who the company piggybacks on, leaves. Who owns that account now? One argument is that Good Relationship goes a long way. But, is there a technical solution to this? Or is there even a need for one?

Twitter has come a long way from just a service that asked “what are you doing” to a strategic channel for businesses. It is no longer a community network, where friends mean what their dictionary definition suggest. While, businesses are working on problems of monetizing these channels, some thought on corporate governance is also called for. And sooner, the better.

It would be interesting to hear what others think about the issue of leveraging Personal Brand for promoting Corporate Brand.

While, my last two blogs were talking about SPAM on twitter and how unwanted, interrupting and noisy messages can clutter your channels making them ineffective and undesirable to use (woops! too much negativity there!), this new update from Twitter, makes me thinking again!

Today’s notification from Twitter to stop @replies from non-friends, is seemingly twitter’s answer to SPAMMERS. I say, a pretty lame one! According to this, you will not be able to @reply to someone you does not follow you. So, here you go – another win for restriction, another kill for the freedom.

And this is a real LOL situation, because if I am a SPAMMER, I can still send “<space>@reply <to anyone I care to send>” So, what does this policy stop?

Why @reply is legitimate?

In fact, there is difference between promoting Best Practices than disciplining. I can site several instances, where I send / receive @replies to and from folks who I know exist but do not follow as I do not care as much. But, once in a while I enjoy the @replies. And I know for sure, I am not alone. From business point of view, if @replies were not allowed everyone who has comcast would be following @comcastcares and vice-versa. Today, @comcastcares guy sniffs around to see “trouble” and “comcast” spoken in one context. As soon as one is found, he sends an @reply “how can we help you” Once that transaction is over, they do not care about one another until again comcast fails for the user. So, now how does this transaction take place? In my own experience, I once refferred my previous company @strongmail to someone. I received an @reply from an email marketer suggesting another email marketing company. Which, I think was a very legitimate communication. Why stop that? It takes away the complete essence of communicating on the channel!!!

I have never liked applications to be restrictive – specially an application that is on the making of cult – just cannot afford to stop some usage / practices, just like that! To me, Twitter’s today’s step just sounds like a work-around for another problem – volume/usage. Another reason that makes me suspicious is Twitter’s scheduled maintenance downtime – On a weekday, at noon PST [We will have one hour of planned maintenance at noon Pacific on Wednesday. Read more.]? Another wrong indication.

At ObjectiveMarketer, we completely rely on the sanity of Twitter. Your health is our life line. Ask us, if we can help. Please do not give us shocks!